I'm reading the CS and the Island at the moment (got hold of an Armada copy and am refreshing my acquaintance with it).

Right at the beginning there's an interesting recap of CS history to date (thereby tantalising readers who haven't read previous titles!). Miss Slater is the main recipient of the history and called 'Slater' most times, rather than Pam or Miss Slater. It puts her rather firmly on the outside right at the start, adn I'm beginning to wonder if it's because she isn't a CS girl that she never really fits in? She's told about Miss Bubb and we're told that This woudl rather severely limit their choice of teaching staff in the future, I think.

We're introduced to Annis, who right at the beginning of term has been reported to Miss Annersley for an untidy cubicle. I have never heard of Hilda dealing with this before - I thought it was Matey who would handle this kind of misdemeanour?

The girls wear cream-coloured coats here. This seems ot be a little bit of an impractical colour for school coats, doesn't it? It sounds delightful, but not very useful.

We run into the usual complication of what to call step-sisters if we're not allowed to call them step-sisters - Cherry and Dickie's relationship is described as 'rather difficult to say', since Dickie's father married the litle girl's (Cherry's) mother. This is step-sisters, isn't it? Or have to got it wrong?

I love the account ot the Juniors' fight in their common room - Miss Annersley deals with it all in utter silence, which I think is rather clever, intimidating the culprits while no doubt wondering how on earth she's going to deal with the mess. But of course, the girls have no idea that this is what is probably happening, and react to the silence as if it's part of the intimidation - it is in part, but I do wonder if the greater part is planning her next actions!

What are gauzes used for in science lessons, please? Kathie burns her hair on a Bunsen Burner and is asked by Bill where her gauze is. At first I thought it was some kind of hair covering, but when she says she forgot to use the gauze, Nell tells her to put her gauze on her work and carry on. Then she's told that in future she's to cover her hair with something - so what is a gauze and what's it used for?

Jo arrives in the science lab and has something to say to each girl there. When it comes to NG Dickie Christie she says, Now I can see that Jo might have heard about DC as a NG, and given that she's the only one in that form it would make it easy for Jo to identify her. But I wondered about the 'you wrote to me two years ago' comment - if Jo didn't get may letters from fans it would be easy to remember that Dickie had written, but I am also wondering if, every time there's a NG, Joey frantically looks at her Fan Letter Spreadsheet, linked directly to each letter and what it said, of course, and genned do that she could then breeze in and sya she remebered it? Which is it, do you think? Hardly any letters, or many, all stored in complicated files?

Kester Bellever, the World Famous Ornithologist, comes to give a lecture to the girls, using slides he has prepared himself. They are to be shown using the school's lantern which is It takes Commander Christie a few hours (I think) to get it set up, so it's obviously more than a matter of plugging it in the nearest socket, and this made me wonder - they do have electricity, but does that mean that we can't assume they do have sockets in each room? I just wonder why it would have taken him so long to get it all set up.

Jo presents the School with boats and they are all at the cove, starting to get into them. However, Hilary Burn runs forward, as Games Mistress, to say something about tides and currents. Would Joey have told Hilary about it all so that she had time to look it all up, do you think? I can't see how she'd have such local knowledge easily to hand, especially when the School hasn't ever rowed there before.

That's it for now ...

A gauze is a piece of metal netting (for lack of a better way of putting it) which is balanced on the top of a tripod and goes over a lit bunsen burner.

Re Miss Wilson and Miss Bubb/Miss Slater, IME this is a common problem in many workplaces. People who've worked somewhere for a long time become set in their ways and reluctant to change their way of doing things - most people who were working in the late '80s and '90s will have had colleagues who were horrified at the thought of changing from a manual system to a computerised one - and are particularly reluctant to accept suggestions made by people who are new to the workplace.

I can understand why Miss Wilson would prefer to employ Old Girls, who are steeped in CS culture and likely to be keen to keep things the way they are, but I don't think that being unwilling to accept new ideas is necessarily a good thing. In the early days, everyone's keen to let Miss Durrant introduce the girls to country dancing, and Madge welcomes Grizel's suggestions about Hobbies Clubs and Guides (Grizel never gets enough credit for that!!), and those things become very popular.

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

Love the idea of the fanmail database, but think maybe Joey remembered the unusual name? Presumably not too many (female) Dickies about (that sounds much stranger written down than it did in my head )

I've always assume that Miss Slater was called 'Slater' because most of the mistresses did call each other by surname at that time (and nicknames were generally surname-based, such as 'Bill'). It's only in the later Swiss years, when society as a whole was getting less formal, that the mistresses started routinely using first names in the staff room. So I don't think that EBD's use of Miss Slater's surname is meant to convey that she was, from the begining, something of an outcast - though she's evidently not a Chalet School old girl.

With respect to Joey's fanmail from Dickie, I suspect that Joey wouldn't have remembered receiving a letter from a 'Peggy' or 'Mary', but that 'Dickie' or 'Delicia' would certainly have stuck in the brain!

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"The purpose of satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth. And our job, as I see it, is to put it back again..." - Michael Flanders
Emma's book blog

Yes - thank you. I had to go back to the book to see exactly what was happening, and it's this: Elinor herself uses the 'Miss X' to denote who's talking each time. Those who then talk, tell Pam Slater about the various adventures using first names only (I suppose this aligns them well with the hero of each adventure, adn secures their place(s) in the wider school, beyond lessons, I mean). There is one exception to this, and that's right at the start when Miss Burnett lists Mistresses who have left and aren't returning - Miss Stewart, Miss Leslie and Miss Maynard.

But then Miss Wilson breaks in to her list, calling her 'Mary' and speaking of each person with both their first and last names.

After this, reminisences apply first names only to those who have left or who form part of the history of the School.

And of Staff who are present, first names are used, apart from Pam Slater. Now, as these things are being told to Pam Slater, it might suggest that she's new, but actually she's joined the school five years before this point (which does make it a bit odd that she's not heard these stories before), and when she asks about when Nell's hair went white, Hilary Burn says, 'Oh, Slater, haven't you heard that tale?'

So she's been there five years and is still called by her surname. I find this very interesting - it sets up the story of her leaving the school, although of course at this point we have no idea that this will happen.

But there are people who are always called by their surname, all their lives. I still call one of my school friends by her maiden surname despite the fact that she got married (and divorced) many long years ago.

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Cestina's dolls houses - Open at last!

Yes ... is it usual for the Chalet School though?

It wasn't in the least usual for my school either......she's the only one amongst my contemporaries that I know of - and it was a large school.

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Cestina's dolls houses - Open at last!

I remember thinking before that it made her seem like an outsider and not so much "accepted" as one of the gang. The only other mistress I can remember being called by surname only is Miss Everett, and she was only a visiting mistress, wasn't she? Gardening only, so she might not have had that much contact with the rest of the staff as she wouldn't have been hanging around the school all the time like them. Of course, it might have happened in other places that I'm just not remembering!

Isn't Peggy Burnett called by her surname at some point? Possibly when the well on the island was rediscovered?

Also wouldn't it be more between colleagues that hadn't been to the same school?
At the same school as pupils they would have called each other by their first names or in the case of Miss Wilson using first names - having taught them since they were a mere slip of a junior.

That sort of makes a case for Miss Slater as an outsider but I have always got the feeling, she was slightly standoffish anyway, always bewailing her separateness rather than throwing herself in at the deepend like the early teachers or Miss Ferrars - getting involved with the play and the introduction of the spot supper.

When does Miss Slater join the CS? If she was a post war appointment - was there a shortage of teachers due to people joining up and not training as a teacher, so a female maths teacher to be head of the department was probably a limited choice. R.F. Delarfield highlights the problem with teachers in his books about a boys boarding schools (To Serve Them All My Days and The Headmaster). Was it the same problem in girls schools?

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‘He has only half learnt the art of reading who has not added to it the even more refined accomplishments of skipping and of skimming.’
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Five years before Island. SOmeone will be able to be more specific that that!

And thank you so much for mentioning the Delderfield books, ammonite. I mean, it's not as if I need to but any more books ... Oh, but when has the need to buy books ever dictated when I do? And here I go - off to search Amazon ... !

I'd totally forgotten about those books, I've just logged on to Amazon and bought them for my Kindle. I keep discovering books that i want for the Kindle.

Joey visits the Sixth and settles to do some darning of her own while chatting to the girls there. Amongst other things, they discuss CS scholarships - Jacynth intended to sit for the Therese Lepattre Schol. but changed to the Karl Anserl Schol. Gay has also sat for this, but her family is wealthy, whereas Jacynth isn't. Joey comments that she hopes Jacynth gets it.

There aren't a lot of girls in the Sixth generally, and as far as I know, no scholarships are open to girls from outside the CS (or are they?), and it's made me wonder then about the chances of any one girl being successful quite high, percentage-wise?) and if other things were taken into account, such as ability to pay their own way? So if Gay and Jacynth were at the same level musically (they're not), woudl Jacynth's poverty have given her the edge? Or even, if a poor girl entered for any scholarship, would her poverty have given her a much greater chance of being successful?

Joey is darning the stockings of the Triplets - she offered to do tehm to 'give Matey a lift'. Does this mean that poor Matey usually did the darning and repairs for all the younger girls? Wouldn't it have taken her for ever? A what a horrible job!

'Mother Carey' - I cannot work this one out at all. Is 'Carey a Christian name? I have never heard it before. It sounds so odd. Do other girls whose parents marry call their steps 'Father George' or 'Mother Mary' (oops - I didn't chose that one deliberately, but it nicely highlights the potential problems!)?

I understand that Carey is a short for Caroline or Catherine.
There is a 1938 film called Mother Carey's Chickens, and also Stormy Petrels (birds) are also sometimes known as Mother Carey's Chickens. I would guess that the name is an affectionate play on either one of these explanations. Perhaps they saw the film, or Kester Belever told them of the bird, either is possible.

Gerald Durrell wrote a book, "The Mockery Bird", where Mother Carey's Chickens referred to a Madam and her - um - ladies of pleasure. Luckily, that was published in 1981, so EBD couldn't have been alluding to that

Ah - thank you! Does it work, though? Calling a step-parent mother or father-name? What would have been Dickie's options naming her step mother?

Can't you essentially do whatever you collectively like? I guess it depends on what you feel comfortably doing? I can understand Dickie's not wanting to use Mother/Mum by itself as that would be her term for her mother. I actually thought Mother Carey was a sweet and affectionate term.

I think Carey is short for Caroline. Carrie would be more usual, but I've always assumed it was Carey to rhyme with Mary. I think Mother Carey is quite nice too: it's a bit of a mouthful, but Dickie might have felt awkward using Mother or Mum, as ammonite said, and the alternative would have been Auntie Carey which isn't ideal either.

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

My little sister was adopted - she came to live with my family as a baby but wasn't formally adopted until she was almost 4, and had sporadic contact with her birth mother during those years, as the painstakingly slow adoption process ground its way through the system. She called my mother 'mum' almost from the time she started to talk, quite naturally because she was living with us and was going to be adopted, and called her birth mother 'Mum-Joanne' - not so different from Dickie's 'Mother Carey'.

I believe the actress Carey Mulligan pronounces her name 'Carrie' rather than to rhyme with Mary, it's just an alternate spelling of the name.

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The Life and Times of Me
"Real life is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one" ~ Albert Einstein

Children often use different names to differentiate between grandparents, don't they? My paternal grandparents had an alsatian dog called Tim, so we clled them Tim-Granny and Tim-Grandad to make clear that we weren't talking about our maternal grandparents (who had no nick-names).

But do we see this anywhere else in the Chalet School books?